Marisia - Maros Megyei Múzeum Évkönyve 25. (1996)

I. Arheologie

THE ROMAN RURAL SETTLEMENT OF CRISTE$TI

27

each oil lamp found at Criste§ti will be able to distinguish the copies from the imported pieces.

Finally, a statuette of a high artistical level -the head of luno belonging to a cult statue made of alabaster (Pl.VI.2)- is considered a piece of import, being not possible to determine, for the time, the workshop from which this statuette proceeds.

III. THE SPIRITUAL LIFE

1. Epigraphical Monuments

The inscriptions on stone, almost all fragmentary, in number of 20, among which only 3 are included into the CIL, III (7714-15,12550), the others being published afterwards29. The greatest part of the epigraRhical sources are funerary inscriptions, only one being an altar consecrated to Mars Augustus by Q. Caecilius Caecilianus, praefectus alae30, another being a dedication to the emperor Antonius Pius31, and the third being an architectural fragment with inscription: Hermeros lapidarius f(ecit)32 (PI.IV.3).

At Criste§ti all the known inscriptions are written in Latin, fact which expresses without ambiguity the linguistic situation: in the settlement and inside the Roman camp Latin was spoken.

An important discovery, made in 1886, is that of a military diploma (AD 158)33 belonging to a soldier from ala I Gallorum et Bosporanorum34. Numerous tegular inscriptions belong to ala I Bosporanorum35 -the troop garrisoned in castrum of Criste§ti-, but here are known other stamped bricks as well (legio V Macedonica, ala I Batavorum)36

Finally, it should be also mentioned the smaller epigraphical traces such as the stamp-inscriptions on the lucernae: AQVIN, CAI, CAI.GEM, CASSI, C.DESSI, FESTI, FORTIS, G.I.P., LEGIDI, LVPATI, MIA, OCTAVI, PVLLI, SEXTI, STROBILI37, VALERIVS ALBIVS (?)38.

29 ÍRD, III/4, 133-149.

30 ÍRD, III/4, 135.

31 ÍRD, III/4, 134.

32 See supra note 19.

33 CIL, XVI, 108 = ÍRD, I, DipID XVI.

341.I.Russu, in SCIV, XXIII, 1972, 1, p.65, nr.3.

35 N.Gudea, A.Zrinyi, in EpigrTrav, 1977, p.225-231.

36 ÍRD, III/4, 150, 1; 152,1. As regards the diffusion of Legio V Macedonica's

stamped bricks, see M.Bärbulescu, Din istoria militarä a Daciei romane. Legiunea V Macedonica §i castrul de la Potaissa, Cluj-Napoca, 1987, p.53.

37 N.Gostar, op.cit., p.155-173.